


And They Linger

by IrisCandy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Derealization, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Trauma, Mentions of Sciles, Mentions of Scott McCall - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, panic attack mentions, those tags are very ominous i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4610952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisCandy/pseuds/IrisCandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Don’t worry about Lydia</i>, Scott said, because he probably wants to keep her away from him. Except she's calling him back now, and it coaxes a painful lump to his throat, because of course she’s calling now. Of course she is. (Post 5x09)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And They Linger

He remembers when he was possessed. The dark fox spirit infiltrated his mind, twisted his dreams into nightmares and shattered his reality to a thousand scattered pieces. It used his hands to kill and his tongue to taunt, and he was so far gone then that he was able to shove a sword through his best friend’s chest and _twist_ until he screamed. He was able to push his face into a terrified Lydia Martin’s neck and breathe her in as if she were nothing more than a meal.

He was the cause of Allison Argent’s death.

The fox inside him had done terrible, horrible things. It had turned his own mind into a desolate white space to be feared. 

He knows now, a truth that will stay with him for the rest of his days, that he was too weak to stop it while it still mattered.

And yet, Scott had never looked at him then the way he’s looking at him now, rain slipping over his slouched, defeated form as he stares at Stiles with a look of such sheer disappointment that it borders on _pity._

“What do I do about this?” Stiles pleads, his heart pounding in his chest. He’d give a limb to rewind time. “What do you want me to do, okay just – Scott, just tell me how to fix this, all right?”

And he means it. Maybe it’s selfish of him, maybe he has no right to a friend, but he needs someone to tell him what to do now. He needs someone to blindfold him and push him in the right direction, because everything he touches at his own will with his own hands seems to crumble shortly after.

“Just tell me - what do you want me to do?!” he begs, as if it were easy. Scott always made it look easy. Scott always knew the right way to go. Stiles never realized how much he admires him for it.

His best friend looks lost for words, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water before he settles his gaze on Stiles with finality. He looks utterly pained, and Stiles feels disgusted with himself. He doesn’t deserve the small blossom of hope unfolding in his chest as he waits for Scott to speak.

“Don’t worry about Malia, or Lydia,” Scott says. “We’ll find them. Maybe, uh… maybe you should talk to your dad.”

And then he’s gone. Scott turns his back on him, leaving him sputtering in the rain with a chest so heavy as to drag him to his knees.

His best friend only disappears behind the door of the animal clinic, and yet it feels as if he’s put a galaxy’s distance between them, and Stiles is downright terrified of the sudden empty space before him.

He lets the rain soak him to the bone. He feels the ground shifting beneath his feet as he stumbles numbly back to his Jeep after what seems like hours.  He lets himself shiver in the front seat for a few minutes, closing his eyes and trying to bring himself to a place before this, when Scott was still there in his world.

Hours earlier, he’d been scouring the forest with Lydia. There was a split second, then, when he thought he might tell her of what he’d done. Sweet, knowledgeable Lydia who always seems to know what he’s thinking before he says it.

His phone rings. He jumps before sliding it from his pocket and wiping the mist from its screen.

 _Don’t worry about Lydia,_ Scott said, because he probably wants to keep her away from him. Except she's calling him back now, and it coaxes a painful lump to his throat, because of course she’s calling now. Of course she is.

Maybe it isn’t really fair to Lydia, considering she isn’t a psychic and she can’t know that most of Stiles’ world just ended, but he thinks this conversation with her might actually be the determining factor on whether or not he accidentally drives himself into a tree on the way home tonight.

It wouldn’t ring for much longer. Lydia’s face lights up his car, her strawberry blonde hair casting a slightly red hue over his steering wheel. He waits until the last minute and he can’t tell if he hopes she’ll still be on the line when he presses the phone to his ear.

“Lydia?” Stiles croaks.

“Hey,” Lydia huffs. She sounds irritated. “I got your message. Parrish has decided to lock himself up at the Sheriff’s station to protect us. Your dad’s dealing with all the questions and I…I don’t know what I’m doing.”

She sighs. He imagines her pursing her lips and pacing aimlessly around the Sheriff’s station. His heart feels a little warmer, but his throat is still impossibly tight.

He stares ahead.

“Stiles,” she says blankly. “You there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Sorry,” Stiles says. He clears his throat.

“What?” Lydia asks. She sounds alert now. “What’s happening? Is Hayden okay?” 

“She’s holding on,” Stiles says. “I think. I hope. I don’t know.”

“Stiles,” Lydia says firmly. “What’s going on?”

Is she sure she isn’t psychic?

“I don’t really know, Lydia,” Stiles says, his throat working furiously to keep the tears at bay. His voice sounds ragged, cracking on her name.

“Where are you?” she asks.

He pushes a hand through his hair. “In my car.”

“ _Where,_ Stiles,” Lydia pushes.

“My dad’s still at the station?” Stiles asks.

“Yes,” Lydia says, sounding frustrated at the change in subject. “He’ll be here for a while. Why?”

“Lydia, can you”-

His voice breaks off. He has to grip the steering wheel to keep himself together, taking deep breaths into the phone’s speaker.

He squeezes his eyes shut as he makes his decision. “I need to tell you something. Something important.”

There’s silence on the other end for a moment before Lydia says softly, “Okay.”

 

She gets to his house before he does, long after the rain stops. When he pulls into the driveway, she’s pushing herself off his front step and wrapping her arms around herself, striding over to his Jeep with a crease between her eyes. 

He thinks he notices her giving him a onceover as he climbs out of the car, the quick but thorough scan from his feet to his eyes that means she’s searching for injuries.

He tries not to think about how that seems to be the standard greeting in the pack that he no longer belongs to.

She says nothing as he shuts the door behind him. He tries to hold himself up on shaky knees. Everything feels alarmingly slow and sluggish around him, an almost unreal sense of haziness coming over him as he tries to block out the pain from his heart.

“Stiles, you’re soaked,” Lydia remarks, her arms falling away from her torso. Her voice is a mix of concern and apprehension.

He nods quickly, keeping his eyes toward the ground and his hand still wrapped around the door handle to his Jeep. “I need to tell you something.”

“So tell me,” Lydia says. “ _After_ we get you inside.” 

He nods again, though he’s practically tearing up at the seams inside as the insidious secret weighs heavier and heavier on his chest.  

“C’mon,” she says quietly, tugging at his sleeve before lightly grabbing him around the wrist and pulling him along toward his front door. She can feel her troubled gaze on his face as he fumbles with his keys. He can’t tell if the tremors running through his body are really from the chill of his waterlogged clothing or the dread crawling through his veins, but Lydia seems to notice them nonetheless.

Finally, he gets his door open.

He walks five steps into his dark, empty house before he can’t hold himself up anymore. His limbs don’t feel real. Scott feels so far away as to be imaginary. He’s never _hurt_ this bad, like a hole’s been punched through the very core of him, leaving him breathless and gutted and useless. 

He does his best to catch himself at his stairs, sitting – or slouching, or collapsing, he doesn’t know – on the bottom step and rolling his head toward the banister.

Lydia starts, “Hey” -

She stoops down toward the stairs, neglecting the light switch so that they’re lit only by the blue wash of moonlight streaming through the open door. She gets on her knees in front of him, ducking her head to stare up at him under her lashes.

Her eyes are glassy; her skin is beautifully pale in the luminescent light. “Hey. Stiles. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Her voice is somehow urgent and soft all at once, but he can tell that she’s scared. The last thing he wants is to scare her away. He can’t bear it.

He trembles.

“I killed Donovan,” Stiles says, and it’s almost easier to say it flat out. No euphemisms. No _sort ofs_ or _maybes_ or _didn’t-mean-tos_. “I killed him.”

Lydia says nothing. He feels her tense, but she keeps his gaze. Her expression is dreadfully inscrutable.  

“He chased me up the scaffolding in the library. He wasn’t human – he wasn’t…he was angry. At me, at my dad. I don’t know who he wanted to kill more but I knew he was going to kill one of us, or both of us, so…I let the scaffolding collapse on top of him and then I watched him die. I watched him”-

He pushes his lips into a thin line and screws his eyes shut, because his sudden spell of bravery has left him. He can’t look at Lydia’s face. He can’t watch her leave him, when he knows she has every right to. She has every right to get up, to leave his house without a word and never come back, and he thinks that might ruin him.

“And Scott…” Stiles says, horror filling his voice. “Scott is never going to look at me again…”

Her hand is suddenly on his bicep, sending warmth through the cold, and a shiver shoots through him all over again.

He lifts his head and opens his eyes, his heart pounding.

Lydia’s lips are parted and her eyes are round and searching his face for something he can’t understand. Then, tightening her lips again, she shakes her head softly.

She says, “Stiles, do you know how many times we’ve all come so close to death that we would have died ten times over if it weren’t for someone saving us?”

He says nothing. He doesn’t think he can believe even her if she were to tell him it was simply self-defence.

“Either that, or…” Lydia continues, her voice a gentle half-whisper. “Or we would have pulled ourselves up and fought as well as we could. And most of the time, a fight can’t end the way we want it to. It can’t.”

She’s quiet for a moment, shuffling closer a little and tightening her grip on his arm, as if to make sure he’s listening. Her eyes burn into his. “I don’t know if the two of you could have made it out alive back there, Stiles. I wasn’t there. But what I do know, Stiles, is that you’re still alive. And you’re not a killer.”

His heart lurches. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “Am I not?”

Lydia takes his face in her hands, taking a moment to push some of the wet hair from Stiles’ forehead before holding both palms against his cheeks. Stiles’ own hand tightens around the bannister. He can smell her strawberry scented shampoo and see the dewiness of her eyes in the blue light.

“Don’t let this destroy you,” Lydia whispers. Each word is enunciated so carefully, so fervently, that he feels each one pressing into his skull and speeding up his heart in his chest.

He can’t speak. He can’t move. Every part of him aches.

“Okay?” she asks. She nods encouragingly at him, looking for a sign. “Okay, Stiles?”

Something about the look she’s giving him sets him off. He feels his eyes burning as he searches her face - Lydia’s face, full of concern, of compassion, of everything he loves about her, staring right back at him. Her face, so wise, so beautiful, concentrated on nothing else but his own eyes, and he knows _she believes him._ She believes him.

“Scott will forgive you. If he hasn’t already,” Lydia says with a small, affectionate smile. She swipes her thumbs across his cheeks before taking her hands away, folding them in her lap. Stiles gives a choked laugh as he throws an arm up to his face and curls in on himself.

He feels Lydia shifting and lifts his head, his teeth gritted into a wince. She moves beside him on the step and places her hand on his back.

“We need to get you upstairs,” she says softly.

Stiles shakes his head. Scott’s out there, probably fighting for someone’s life, probably hating him, probably destroying himself to keep somebody else safe. Scott’s out there, and he’s drenched, and he’s cold, but he’s still fighting for them.

“Stiles,” Lydia insists.

“Do you ever- do you ever think that maybe we’re not going to make it to graduation?” Stiles rasps. “That maybe we’re just doomed to this town?”

She’s quiet for a moment. She curls her fingers over his back before sliding her hand down to her lap. “Are you asking me that as a banshee?”

“As you,” he says, turning his head to look at her. “As Lydia Martin.”

“Yes,” Lydia says plainly. Her eyes glaze over. “For some of us, that’s already the truth.”

Stiles tenses, his chest constricted, before he nods and averts his gaze to the ground. He whispers, “Me too. Every day.”

They sit in silence for a long time, and Stiles’ thoughts wander inevitably to his fight with Scott. The next time a violent tremor rips through Stiles, he knows it’s not from the cold.

_Some of us are human._

“I said something awful to him,” he says, his voice shaking. “I told him exactly what I know he’s afraid of and I didn’t mean it. I couldn’t fucking mean it, but I said it because I wanted to. Because he wouldn’t believe me.”

Suddenly, Lydia tenses next to him. He turns his gaze toward her, frowning as a look of confusion dawns on Lydia’s face.

“Stiles,” she says. “Did you tell him what you told me? Did you tell him exactly what happened?”

He shakes his head. “No. I don’t know how he knew, he- he had the wrench that I used to hit Donovan when he attacked me. It had the blood on it-” 

Lydia stands, turning on him with a furrowed brow. “How could he have known it was Donovan’s blood? Stiles, I get you’re upset, but you have to know that if Scott knew what happened, he wouldn’t be angry with you for protecting yourself. You know he wouldn’t.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying someone told him what happened,” Lydia says. “And I’m not sure it was the real story. Am I the only person that knows about this?”

There’s a pang in Stiles’ chest as the blood drains from his face. He looks up at Lydia with his eyes wide and his heart beginning to pound furiously.

“Theo,” he says, his voice a poisonous whisper.

He feels suddenly nauseous. He grips the bannister and tries to stand, but has to double over himself to keep the contents of his stomach – which isn’t much - where they belong.

“Okay,” Lydia says breathlessly. She starts forward and places her hands on his shoulders from behind, hunched over him, tugging lightly until he stands in a trance. She lets her lead him up the stairs, to his room, his feet shuffling blindly behind her.

Once she gets him sitting on the edge of the bed, she gets to her knees and grips his hands in hers, trying to catch his gaze. He feels his own face contorted with pain, with anger, and the rest of him feels suddenly numb as the world tilts on its side, shifting before his eyes, making him dizzy.

“We’ll get him, okay? We’ll get him,” Lydia says, nodding. She squeezes his hands tighter. “Stiles. Can you hear me?”

He can, but it’s almost as if she’s underwater.

He thinks maybe it’s a panic attack, but he’s breathing fine. He almost feels calm; so overwhelmed that he’s already drowned from the weight of it.

“He’s tr-trying to tear us all apart,” Stiles says brokenly.

“He won’t,” Lydia says, shaking her head. “He couldn’t.”

Lydia’s phone rings. He sees Parrish’s face flash briefly on the screen before she declines the call, placing the phone on the floor. 

“He has,” Stiles whispers, his mouth trembling.

Lydia’s lips part as she searches for words. Her eyes fill with tears, because suddenly she must know, she must feel that he’s right. She feels everything.

Because there’s nothing else left to do, Lydia wraps her arms around his soaked shoulders and buries her face in his neck. He can feel the pounding of her heart against him. He can feel her shaking. He can feel her hope leaving her as she collapses into her fear of the Doctors, of Parrish, of Theo, of her banshee, of their losses, of the crumbling foundations of their small, imperfect pack.  

Stiles slides off his bed and to the floor to get closer to her, folding his arms around her back and squeezing her small body against him. They curl into each other, a damp, trembling mass on his bedroom floor as the collective fear of their past, their present, their future, buckles in on them both.

And they ache. And they quiver. And they linger.

And they cling, for hours, to each other - to one of the only things they have left in their ill-fated world.

**Author's Note:**

> ronansgansey on tumblr


End file.
